Cartography - Module 7 - Google Earth

 Welcome,

It doesn't feel like this should be the end, we arrived here ever so quickly. But it is, the end of this half semester. This week involves a bit of collaboration between tools. That is, some initial work in ArcGIS Pro, with some display and refining in Google Earth.

ArcGIS Pro can export feature classes and layers into Key Markup Language (KML) which is readable and displayable by Google Earth amongst others. The map below is a combination of KML layers output from ArcGIS Pro and then input into Google Earth. This is all to get after some of our last learning objectives. To not only use these conversion tools, but to demonstrate some of the software interoperability that's present in both. 

Google Earth can do more than present the KML information, you can then add to it. In the below case we can see an added legend utilizing the ability to overlay images within Google Earth. Also place markers can be used to then explore your graphics even more. Ultimately the below is the culmination of three different layers, a point layer and two polygon layers (displayed in different ways, water vs, county outlines) exported and then presented within Google Earth. Not displayed here is the tour that was taken after involving the tour recording feature. One of the keys here is that an audience may more readily understand looking at Google Earth or Google Maps than they would a deliverable from ArcGIS Pro itself. This allows us to add even more locational realism and exploration capabilities to our presentation, with the map below being a small taste. 

Note that the water features and dot map are only for the southern half of Florida. The original intent was for the lower 27 counties specifically. But for better context I still wanted to show the whole of Florida for an initial look. Regardless, the key here is a demonstration of some of the collaborative capabilities these different platforms can have. We will see you in the next class, and work toward carrying all of these principles forward. 

Thank you! 

v/r

Brandon